The present invention relates to wireless telecommunication handsets, and, in particular, to visual display of progress tones and progress audio messages.
The use of wireless telephones connected both to cellular systems and in-house wireless systems has increased dramatically in recent years. One factor for this dramatic increase in the utilization of wireless telephones has been that the size of the wireless telephones has decreased. The smaller wireless telephones are easier to carry. However, the decreased size has made the wireless telephones more difficult to utilize in certain circumstances. One circumstance is when a wireless telephone is being used to access voice messages stored on a voice mail system. First, the user has to dial the voice mail system, listen for an audio message requesting the telephone number of the user, enter the telephone number, listen for the message requesting the user""s password, and enter the password. This results in the user having to (1) dial the voice mail system utilizing the keypad of the wireless telephone, (2) put the wireless telephone back to the user""s ear, (3) upon hearing the message requesting the user""s telephone number, remove the telephone from the user""s ear and dial in the telephone number utilizing the keypad of the wireless telephone, (4) put the wireless telephone back to the user""s ear and listen for the message requesting the password, and (5) when the message requesting the password is received, the user must remove the wireless telephone from the user""s ear and enter the password utilizing the keypad of the wireless telephone. This procedure at best is unpleasant, and, at times, difficult to perform.
Another circumstance is when utilizing a wireless telephone with a feature provided by business telecommunication systems called Remote Access. Remote Access feature allows a user to dial a special telephone number on the business telephone switching system, enter a password, and then, dial a long distance call via the business telecommunication system. The purpose of the Remote Access feature is to allow users to utilize the long distance billing rates charged to the business telecommunication system. Once again, to utilize the Remote Access feature, requires listening for progress tones and/or audio messages and entering codes or telephone numbers via the keypad of the wireless telephone. The end result is that the user is constantly listening and then having to remove the wireless telephone from the ear so as to enter the required input on the keypad on the wireless telephone.
A prior art solution to these problems is provided by wireless telephones that have a built-in speaker phone capability. When accessing a voice mail system or remote access feature, the user uses the speaker phone capability of the wireless telephone so that the user does not have to put the wireless telephone to their ear. The problem with this solution is that often the user wants to access a voice mail system or remote access feature while in a public place and does not wish to utilize the speaker phone capability of the wireless telephone.
The foregoing problems are solved and a technical advance is achieved by a wireless telephone and method that detect the presence of progress tones or progress audio messages and convert these tones or audio messages to a text form that is then displayed on the wireless telephone. This capability frees the user of the wireless telephone from having to place the wireless telephone to their ear when contacting a service provided by a remote communication system. A digital signal processor (DSP) is utilized to detect the progress tone and to convert audio messages to text using speech to text techniques. The operations of the DSP are controlled by the user performing operations on the keypad of the wireless telephone.
Other and further aspects of the present invention will become apparent during the course of the following description and by reference to the accompanying drawing.